


the end of days job

by openended



Category: Leverage
Genre: Apocalypse, Gen, Road Trips, end of the world ot3 feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 02:30:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4083235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>This is how the world ends</i>. A job in five parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the end of days job

**I.**

This is how the world ends: 

A Baron Oil tanker rusts through and leaks into the Atlantic Ocean. Even a team of fifty PR sharks can't spin that this is the tenth rusty tanker in as many months. Protests turn into riots as oil washes up on beaches and chokes mangrove forests, kills tens of thousands of people, not to mention the birds.

A wheat blight ravages the world's crops, and Wakefield Agricultural Corporation is the only one left standing with surviving wheat fields. Food prices jump astronomically, nearly overnight. There's a run on alternative grains - quinoa bears the brunt of it - which ruins farmers and their land, overworking the soil to send their staple foods overseas.

VerdAgra produces a soil additive that allows farmers to overwork their fields without devastating the soil underneath. It causes cancer in 15% of lab rats, a fact that comes out only after the additive has been in wide circulation for two years.

It takes four years, start to finish, from the New York Times headline about the tanker until the worldwide economy collapses for good.

They’re outside Austin at the time, have been for a few months for a long con on, ironically, an oil man. The dust isn’t anything they aren’t used to already, but the wind picks up and blows the dust into the air, whirls it around into their faces, so much dust that Eliot doesn’t even _dammit, Hardison_ when the other man puts on his laser goggles to protect his eyes.

The local television stations go off the air in the middle of the night, and never come back on.

**II.**

They regret letting Parker drive, but they’ll regret it even more if they don’t. Fifteen pounds of crazy in a five pound bag, and damn but ten years as the mastermind and she still knows how to drive a getaway car. 

Texas was a good place to hole up for a few years after the end, but it is time to go. 

“We didn’t steal anything,” Parker argues, swerving harshly to avoid a dumpster, “it can’t be a getaway car.”

“We are getting away,” Hardison says, frantically charging his EMP gun with the last juice he can eke out of an overclocked power storage brick, trying not to look too hard at Eliot standing on the passenger seat, halfway out of the sunroof, taking sniper shots at the cars behind them, “and we are in a car. Therefore, _getaway car_.”

“Not the point, Hardison!”

“Very much the point, Parker!” Eliot shouts down. “Is that thing ready yet? I’m almost out of shots.”

“Ten seconds,” Hardison says, one eye on the power indicator lights, one eye on the back window and the black SUVs that keep getting closer.

“You have five,” Eliot drops the emptied gun into the car and with one smooth movement, pulls a knife from his boot and throws it toward the oncoming cars. The knife sticks in the wheel of the leftmost SUV and sends it spinning out of control into the cars behind it, but three drivers avoid the crash and keep on their heels.

Seven seconds and Hardison hands the gun up to Eliot. A high-pitched beep, and then their pursuers skid to a sad, fishtailing stop, friction and inertia punching out a no-win fight. The gunshots from the angry mob fly wild, and Parker speeds them across the Oklahoma border.

**III.**

Forty safe houses around the world, fifteen in the continental United States alone, all filled with end-of-the-world supplies, and the closest one they have once they blow out of Texas is the brewpub in Portland.

They stop in Omaha after driving straight through the night across Oklahoma, to fill up on gas and supplies and to steal a map.

Hardison finds her sitting in the middle of the snack aisle, eating one of those snack packs with pretzels and a little container of fake cheese, food designed to survive past the end of the world. “Hey girl.”

“What I don’t understand,” she says, handing him a snack of his own, “is how the blight happened. I thought we stopped Wakefield.” There are a lot of things she doesn’t understand about how the world fell apart into what it is today, where she’s stealing in plain daylight and not even trying to hide it, where Hardison’s reduced to paper maps and binoculars, where Eliot’s keeping two guns on him, at least. But the blight, the blight has been bothering her for three years; the blight she can get answers for.

He pulls the plastic seal back and sits down beside her. “They must’ve had backups, contacts who got Hannity the original canister.”

She pauses. “That’s not comforting.”

“No,” he says. “No, it is not.”

Eliot finds them there two hours later, a thief and a hacker picking the marshmallows out of a box of stale Lucky Charms. “Seriously? I’ve spent two hours siphoning gas and packing supplies and you two are sitting here eating cereal?”

Parker looks up at him and smiles, offers him the box.

**IV.**

The road starts to get weird outside of Boise. Spray-painted signs and statues made out of burned-out cars, they’ve seen it before but it’s... _weird_ in Idaho.

“Bad weird,” Parker says as they pass a car statue that looks disturbingly like a person.

Hardison slows the car to a stop, lets Eliot stand up through the sunroof and peer through the binoculars, scanning ahead.

“We’ve got armed guard patrols,” he pauses, counting, “five of ‘em.” He scans upward. “And tower lookouts, snipers.” He drops down into the seat, tossing the binoculars to Parker. “Something bad’s going on in this town.”

Hardison looks at Eliot, and they both look into the backseat to Parker.

She glances sideways for a moment; three’s good, they fit perfectly together, but some days - especially now - she misses the five. She looks back at Eliot and Hardison, and shrugs. “Can’t be harder than taking down that banana guy a few years ago.”

Four weeks of pretending to drink the Kool-Aid, four weeks of blending in and _yes sir_ -ing to the people wearing all black in the heat of summer, standing on every street corner with an assault rifle in their hands, four weeks of plotting and planning and mapping out streets and buildings and guard rotations by firelight.

Four weeks and they leave Boise with a mayor who wants to help, a mayor who was elected and smiles like she means it, a mayor who doesn’t give guns to teenagers and ration water in the name of keeping false peace.

Four weeks, and they have a plan for the end of the world.

**V.**

They pull up to the brewpub in the middle of the night after driving nonstop from Boise, Eliot staring out the back window, nightvision goggles pressed to his eyes the whole way to make sure they weren’t followed. 

“Okay,” Parker says, hopping out of the van. “We start in California, we’ll keep the brewpub as a base, like we used to.” She shoulders her backpack and nudges the door shut. 

“Someone’s gonna notice,” Eliot says, lifting the bags with all the guns they’ve stolen. “World’s gone crazy, crazier people took charge. Someone’s gonna notice there’s another player.” He nearly runs into Hardison, standing still at the back entrance. “ _Dammit_ , Hardison.”

Parker shushes him, standing even stiller than Hardison. “No, he’s right. Something’s wrong. This place is untouched, the rest of the neighborhood’s got broken glass and graffiti.”

Eliot drops the bags, pulls out two pistols, and nudges his way in front of the others. Parker picks the lock, and he opens the door.

“About time you three showed up,” Tara says, flicking the safety back on her own gun. “It’s okay,” she shouts behind her into the dark.

Maggie and Amy stand up behind the bar, and Archie steps forward from the shadows.

Parker looks around the room, but no one else arrives. “Nate and Sophie?” The question’s out before she can think about it, before she can think about an answer she doesn’t want to hear.

“Safe on a yacht off the coast of San Francisco,” Tara says.

A smile ghosts across Parker’s face, a twitch of her lips as she tilts her head. “We’ve got work to do.”


End file.
